TL;DR: A poorly structured brief is the single biggest cause of requotes and sample iterations in screen and pad printing projects — not price disagreements or artwork problems.
TL;DR: In our experience, briefs missing substrate hardness data add an average of 8–12 working days to the sampling cycle because we have to run test pulls before confirming ink and pad selection.
What a Supplier Actually Needs Before They Can Quote Screen or Pad Printing #
Most quotation requests we receive for screen and pad printing are incomplete — not because buyers are careless, but because the information gaps aren’t obvious unless you’ve sat on the production side. A quote for screen or pad printing on packaging isn’t like quoting a folding carton. The substrate geometry, surface texture, coating status, and ink chemistry all interact. If we don’t know the substrate, we can’t confirm the ink system. If we don’t know the ink system, we can’t confirm the mesh count or pad hardness. The price follows from those decisions, not the other way around.
Before any quote can be locked, we need five things from a brand partner:
- Substrate type and surface finish — rigid plastic (ABS, PP, HDPE), glass, metal, coated paperboard, or silicone. Surface finish matters as much as material: a gloss-coated bottle requires a different primer than a matte-coated one.
- Part geometry — flat, cylindrical, tapered, or irregular. Cylindrical parts over 80mm diameter typically can’t run on our standard pad printing carousel and need to be quoted separately on rotary screen.
- Print area dimensions in millimetres — not “logo on front.” We need the bounding box of the print image, because mesh count selection and emulsion volume are calculated from this.
- Colour count and Pantone references — each colour is a separate pass in screen printing and a separate pad station in pad printing. A 3-colour job is not priced like a 1-colour job.
- Quantity tiers — give us at least two tiers, typically your minimum order and your forecast annual volume. Setup costs (screen exposure, cliché engraving) are fixed per job; they affect your per-unit cost more at low volumes.
Without all five, any number we give you is a rough estimate, not a real quote.
The Parameters That Determine Which Process You’ll Be Quoted #
Screen printing and pad printing share ink chemistry but diverge sharply on geometry capability and resolution. Here’s where the decision parameters actually sit:
Print area and substrate curvature are the primary filters. Flat or slightly curved substrates with a print area above 30mm × 30mm almost always go to screen printing. Below that, or on anything with a compound curve (a cosmetic bottle shoulder, a curved packaging panel), pad printing is the correct process. Our pad printing equipment handles print areas up to 150mm × 100mm per station; beyond that, we’d either tile multiple pads or recommend rotary screen.
Ink film thickness is the parameter brands most often overlook. Screen printing deposits 8–50 microns of ink film depending on mesh count — a 43T mesh (43 threads/cm) deposits roughly 18–22 microns. Pad printing deposits 5–12 microns. This matters for tactile effects, opacity on dark substrates, and chemical resistance after cure. UV-curable inks on our flatbed screen line cure at 120–160 mJ/cm² and reach full adhesion within 2 hours; solvent-based inks on pad printing need 24–48 hours ambient cure before abrasion testing.
Surface energy of the substrate — measured in dynes/cm — determines whether ink will wet and adhere without treatment. Most untreated polyolefins (PP, HDPE) sit at 29–32 dynes/cm, which is below the 38 dyne/cm threshold we require for reliable adhesion without flame or corona treatment. We measure surface energy on incoming substrate lots using ASTM D2578 dyne test films as part of our SQ-04 substrate qualification step. If your substrate hasn’t been treated and you haven’t specified treatment in your brief, we’ll flag it — but if we don’t know the substrate, we can’t flag it.
| Parameter | Screen Printing | Pad Printing |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum print area | ~20mm × 20mm | ~2mm × 2mm |
| Maximum flat print area | 600mm × 900mm | 150mm × 100mm |
| Ink film thickness | 8–50 µm | 5–12 µm |
| Colour registration tolerance | ±0.3mm | ±0.2mm |
| Best substrate geometry | Flat / gently curved | Curved / irregular |
| Typical setup cost per colour | Higher (screen exposure) | Moderate (cliché engraving) |
The most commonly overlooked parameter in incoming briefs is surface coating status on rigid packaging. A brand will specify “white ABS bottle” but not mention that the moulded part has already received a UV lacquer coat from the component supplier. That lacquer changes the required ink adhesion test from a standard cross-hatch per ISO 2409 to a solvent-resistance pull test, and it often means a different primer step that adds cost.
If Your Brief Looks Like This, Here’s What Changes #
If you have a cylindrical substrate under 60mm diameter with a single-colour logo, this is a straightforward pad printing job. Setup involves engraving one steel cliché (typically a 10–15 working day turnaround for first article sample), and per-unit costs drop steeply above 2,000 pieces because the cliché is amortised. At 500 pieces, setup is a meaningful portion of the total invoice; at 5,000 pieces, it’s negligible.
If you have a flat rigid surface above 100mm × 80mm with 4+ Pantone colours and fine halftone artwork, you’re in screen printing territory and the artwork specification matters enormously. We require vector files (AI or EPS) with all text converted to outlines, minimum stroke width 0.3mm, and spot colour separations clearly labelled. If you send us a 300 dpi raster file for a halftone screen job, the first iteration of sampling will be to rebuild the artwork — that’s a delay you can avoid.
If your substrate hasn’t been specified and you’re still in development, the approach changes because we’d rather run a substrate suitability test before committing to a sample round. We can test adhesion on a blank sample of your substrate at no charge if you send us 5–10 pieces. That 3–5 working day test can prevent a failed first sample that would otherwise cost both sides time.
If you’re comparing quotes from multiple suppliers, the most important line item to normalise is setup cost versus unit cost. A low unit price with high setup costs can be more expensive than a higher unit price with amortised tooling — especially on runs below 3,000 pieces. Ask every supplier to break out: (1) one-time setup / tooling cost, (2) unit cost at your minimum quantity, (3) unit cost at double that quantity. This lets you calculate the true landed cost per unit for your forecast volume, and it exposes artificially low unit quotes that bury the cost in setup.
One non-obvious recommendation: for any screen or pad printing job on a surface that will receive downstream handling (filling, capping, secondary packaging), specify the abrasion resistance requirement in your brief. We use ASTM D5264 Sutherland rub test as standard — 50 double rubs at 500g load. If your logistics involve long runs on conveyor systems, you may need 100+ double rubs. If you don’t specify, we quote to 50 double rubs standard, and retrofitting a tougher ink system after samples are approved is a full requalification.
Specification Notes for Brand Partners #
When you brief us on a screen or pad printing project, the two documents that unlock an accurate quote fastest are: (1) a dimensioned drawing or technical datasheet of the substrate part, and (2) your Pantone colour references with a note on whether you want spot colour or process colour matching.
The most common gap we see is undeclared downstream processing. A brand will approve a printed sample, then during production sign-off mention that the part goes through a heat-sealing step at 140°C, or that a solvent-based adhesive is applied nearby. Both scenarios can degrade ink adhesion in ways that weren’t tested in the original sample approval. Tell us about every post-print process in your line — including assembly, filling temperature, and secondary packaging contact — at the brief stage.
Our standard sampling timeline for pad printing is 10–15 working days from confirmed artwork and substrate receipt. Screen printing first articles run 12–18 working days. Production lead time after sample approval is typically 15–20 working days for orders up to 10,000 pieces. Rush tooling (cliché engraving in 5 working days) is possible but carries a cost premium — worth flagging if your launch date is tight.
How many Pantone colours can I include in a pad printing job?
Our pad printing carousel handles up to 6 colours in a single pass for most part geometries. Beyond 4 colours, register tolerance stacks — each additional station adds ±0.2mm tolerance, so a 6-colour job on a curved surface has a cumulative registration envelope you should review before approving artwork with fine detail at colour boundaries.
Do I need to send physical substrate samples before you quote?
For standard materials (clear glass, white ABS, natural HDPE), we can quote from spec sheets. For coated, painted, or unusual substrates, we’ll ask for 5–10 blank samples before confirming the ink system. We’ve had jobs where the moulded colour was close to the brand colour, and the brand hadn’t considered that opacity requirements were completely different on a tinted base — that’s the kind of thing a test pull catches before it becomes a sample failure.
What’s the difference between a white sample, a printed proof, and a production sample?
A white sample (or blank sample) confirms that the substrate geometry and dimensions are correct before any ink is applied. A printed proof is the first inked output off our screen or pad equipment — it’s what you use to approve colour, registration, and position. A production sample is pulled from the actual production run setup. We require sign-off on each stage in sequence; skipping straight to production samples risks approving a process that wasn’t set up correctly.
Can you match a Pantone colour on a curved surface?
Pad printing on curved surfaces does produce slightly different colour density than screen printing on flat — the ink film is thinner (5–12 µm versus 18–22 µm) and the pick-up and release dynamics affect laydown. If colour accuracy is critical, we match to Pantone Matching System under D50 illuminant per ISO 3664:2009 on a flat drawdown, then we print a curved proof and measure delta-E. A delta-E below 2.0 is our acceptance threshold; above that, we adjust ink loading or pad hardness. It depends on your substrate colour and surface texture — some combinations hold delta-E under 1.5 easily; others take two or three ink trials.
What information do you genuinely not need at the quoting stage?
Our dataset on heat resistance behaviour covers UV-cured inks on standard rigid plastics well, but for flexible packaging substrates printed via screen and then thermoformed, we have limited performance data past 60°C. We can quote the job, but we’d be transparent that post-form ink adhesion testing on flexible substrates above 60°C would require a dedicated validation run — something to factor into your project timeline if that applies.
Planning a packaging project? Contact our team to request a complimentary specification review and sample quote.
